The FAFSA won’t be available until Oct. 1 but in the meantime you can download the EFC Formula Guide for the current year and calculate your Expected Family Contribution.
This year’s FAFSA EFC formula includes nominal inflation-related adjustments to the Income Protection Allowance, Adjusted Net Worth of a Business or Farm, and Assessment Rates and, for the first time in many years, actually increases the Asset Protection Allowance, though not by a meaningful amount. More details on the FAFSA’s components are here.
The big question for many families this year is: How do I show on the FAFSA that my income has changed since the 2019 tax year that they’re using? Two possibilities:
- Any parent who has lost their job should check the “Dislocated Worker” box. The FAFSA also has checkboxes for families receiving TANF, Medicaid, SNAP, Free or Reduced Lunch or WIC.
- Since the FAFSA– unlike the CSS Profile– does not have an open-ended field to describe any changes in the family’s circumstances, families may need to go through the Professional Judgement (PJ) process after receiving acceptances and financial aid offers to present their updated circumstances.
Unfortunately, the Department of Education says that families must fill out the FAFSA “as is” and then appeal their award: “Complete the FAFSA questions as instructed on the application (including the transfer of tax return and income information), submit your FAFSA form, then contact the school you plan to attend to discuss how your current financial situation has changed. Note that the school’s decision is final and cannot be appealed to ED.”
Families often ask whether their student can file as independent and thus not be required to report parent income and assets. “Independent” has a variety of requirements, depending on the topic, and those for the FAFSA are quite onerous for undergraduates. The easiest one might be that the student was born before Jan. 1, 1998. The full list of qualifying criteria is on page 3 of the Formula Guide.
Got all that? Here’s the 2021-2022 EFC Formula Guide.
There are 25 comments
Hi,
I just finished filing FAFSA for 2021-2022 for 3 kids that will be in college. However I received higher EFC score then last year(2020-2021) with 2 kids in college from 15000+ to 47000+ this year with 3 kids. This doesn’t make sense as my expectation was to receive lower EFC score with more kids in college.
There has not been any changes to our family income/finance and I have compared last year’s form and this year’s form printout to ensure we entered the correct info and they are very much a like except to an additional child in college.
Thanks in advance for any info that will make sense of this.
Hmmm. That doesn’t make sense. The only thing I can think of is (since $47,000 is so close to 3x$15,000) did you perhaps only include all the students in family size and not in “how many college students”?
Hi, Thanks for your quick reply.
Yes, I have 5 kids and family size = 7 and college students = 3.
Also I was on chat with Fafsa support and she confirmed that $47K is only for one college kid.
I was able to ask the FAfSa support to read off all the numbers they had in the EFC calculations so I could compare to the worksheet I was using. It was helpful, although did not explain everything. I could at least get more info that the SAR.
Ok, I am hitting a high EFC also. I have been calling all their numbers. Finally got a person who told me all the numbers that they can see on their screen. AAI and all the goods. Still can’t find out why it is double than what I thought it was. Any thoughts? Also, in the Allowances against Parents income section, Are they still using Income tax paid as well as Social Security tax allowances? Our numbers are NOT adding up with the FAFSA. I keep getting the run around like the computer than runs these things is never wrong or something.
I’m not sure what your data says so I can’t say for sure but a couple of things come to mind: Is it possible that you have multiple college students but you didn’t answer the question about the number in college correctly? Alteratively, did you do a 401k or IRA rollover that’s showing up on your tax return? And yes, it is actual income taxes paid + allowance for Social Security tax. I’m sorry this process is so frustrating!
I have four kids. This next year my first will go to college. So one kid. In college in a family of 6. I took out about 5k from ira last year. That seems to be fine. It’s the allowances section that is skewed. They are calculating around 50k and I am getting 63k. They don’t seem to be using income tax paid OR SS tax on income 7.65%.
Hmmm. The numbers used in the formula are your actual federal tax liability and calculated allowances on state and FICA. So in many cases people who get a federal refund end up with a higher EFC than expected– though by now that should have evened itself out.
Hi,
I actually used the manual worksheet downloaded from the site and the EFC number came out to ’12K’ with 3 kids in college as last year with 2 kids were around ’15K’. At least it went down. I tried to call and didn’t get to talk to anyone because I got into end less loop of system. Can you share the number you called perhaps I call different number?
1‑800-4FED‑AID
(1‑800-433‑3243)
All contact options are here
Hi,
I too, got an astronomical EFC. More than twice than our annual income. I think a decimal is out of place or an extra zero was added. Called the FAFSA number and because I used the IRS retrieval tool, they can’t help me. I have to call each school’s financial aid office and have them look into it. Have you heard of this before?
Thanks for your help.
That is unfortunate but yes, if the info is coming from the IRS there’s nothing the FAFSA help line can do about it. It’s not all that unusual; in fact, a friend of mine had a similar experience. In her case, she had done an IRA rollover that the IRS DRT showed as income. You’ll want to reach out to schools sooner rather than later to correct it because chances are you’ll be asked for additional documentation such as a tax transcript.
I just looked at my taxes. I bet that’s what happened. I rolled over an IRA. UGH!!!
Good news: that’s an easy fix! But you will need to fix it with each school.
Thank you very much!
Could it be the fafsa with IRS Dara tool is automatically answering the schedule 1 as yes instead of no for exceptions and creating higher EFC’s?
Maybe but what the question is trying to get at is whether the person is eligible for the simplified formula. The rules for that changed when the TCJA tax form came into being in 2018 and that complicated things for the simplified formula. All the Schedule 1 info is on the 1040.
We just received our EFC calculation which is over 80000. I feel disheartened. We tried to do the right thing by saving money in our two children’s 529s which total about $200K. We also saved about $60K for my daughter in a mutual fund account for her once she finishes college. Now I feel as though we should not have saved money all these years. My husband and I have regular paying jobs; don’t own a house; sacrificing homeownership to send the kids to private school. Does this mean we have no chance of receiving financial aid and will have to pay the full price of tuition? With the costs of tuition easily $60-70K and up a year, we will use up the money before my younger child will have a chance to use it. What did we do wrong? Other people never save for college, and now they will be able to receive financial aid. Sounds like a no win situation for those who save. in retrospect, I feel as though we should not have saved as much money all these years.
You raise a lot of important issues here. I’m sorry you feel that saving might not have been the right path for your family. I would encourage you to consider a couple of things: Your college savings is the smallest part of your EFC. $200k in 529s is only increasing your EFC by around $11,200. If the mutual fund account is in your daughter’s name (an UTMA) then that’s doubling the contribution from assets; if it’s in your name then it’s far less. Your income is the bigger piece by far. In either case, it looks like you’ve got around $100,000 saved per child which should open up lots of options compared to those who have not saved. Remember that schools are not required to meet your need; some do and some don’t. Your best bet is to use net price calculators for the schools you’re interested in to see which are going to be the more affordable options. If you’re willing to consider a broader landscape of schools then you will probably discover you have numerous reasonable choices, especially since you can probably cover 100% of the cost of a public university just through your savings.
Collegeaid.gov instructs: “If your parents are divorced or separated and don’t live together, answer the questions about the parent with whom you lived more during the past 12 months.”
So, even though we are providing financial info based on 2019 tax returns, it sounds like when determining which parent to provide info about, it’s based on a different time period, aka, the most recent 12 months, correct? Or can we base it on which parent my daughter lived with more in the calendar year 2019?
I ask because up until the pandemic started, my daughter has always lived a little more time at my house than at her dad’s house in any given year, including 2019. But since school has become virtual during the pandemic, she’s been spending a bit more time at her dad’s house, which is outside of school boundaries and located about 2 hours away (although in the same state).
My daughter’s official address is still at my house in the school system records, and on her drivers license. Our EFC will likely be substantially lower if we use my financial info vs her dad’s, but of course I don’t want to do anything fraudulent! What do you advise?
Also, does the FAFSA care which parent claimed the child as a dependent on the tax returns? My ex and I take turns claiming her each year.
*correction–I meant “studentaid.gov” in my first sentence, not collegeaid.gov.
In your case it is fine to use your info instead of your ex’s. It would probably cause more issues to use your ex’s anyway given the issues you cite– location, address for school, etc. It doesn’t matter who claims her on their tax return; often this is set up in a certain way for various reasons having nothing to do with where the student lives, especially in a situation of shared custody.
OK, great, that definitely simplifies things–thanks for the quick response!
Hey Collegefinancialady,
So my wife and I together pull in $114,000 gross. I’m a school teacher and she and I both are part time ministers at our church. Our EFC is 39093. We have $600 in savings and live paycheck to paycheck. We have 3 kids with our oldest graduating high school this May. She is #2 in her class of 272. She was accepted to Texas A&M and really wants to go there. She is applying for little scholarships but hasn’t heard anything yet. What do you recommend for us ? Is there any way you think she could attend TAMU and be debt free when she graduates? Thanks.
The unfortunate reality is that public schools are not terribly generous with aid. She should definitely apply for scholarships there and for outside scholarships through community organizations etc. Are there any automatic merit scholarships there? That’s usually a better bet than need-based at public schools. She should also cast a wider net. As a great student, she is likely to find many private schools that would offer full scholarships if she’s admitted. That may not be her first choice but I encourage you and her to take the long view– rather than “I want to go to [school name]” think about, “I want my life at 25 to look like _____.” And then search for schools accordingly.